


Vernon Dursley  - the early years

by 5972OltonHall



Series: The Vernon Chronicles [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grunnings, Smeltings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 04:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16569926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5972OltonHall/pseuds/5972OltonHall
Summary: Initially prepared as a writing group exercise, "fill in the blanks for a well-known character in fiction", this is a  Vernon Dursley bio in essay form. It was written as if an answer to this (invented) English Literature exam question:-To what extent was Vernon Dursley’s early life an influence on his failure as husband, parent and guardian? (Discuss).Usual disclaimer. Anything borrowed, whether from canon or elsewhere, remains the copyright of the originator(s)/publisher(s), the rest is my copyright. (See also Notes)





	Vernon Dursley  - the early years

That Vernon Dursley’s early life was a formative element of his later character is undeniable. He was born at the Victoria Hospital, Mansfield, in 1952 as the second child of Fred and Doreen Dursley, and brother to his older sister Marjorie. His father was a pit Deputy and therefore, whilst the family were not in the mega-wealthy bracket, they were by no means poor. In addition to Fred’s incoming salary, from what was by now the National Coal Board, the unfortunate loss of other family members from both sides of the marriage during the war had not done this particular branch of the Dursley clan any harm.

His mother, Doreen Dursley, was a distant cousin of the Duke of Portland, via various familial connections into the Cavendish-Bentinck family over the years. She was a typical managerial class wife of the era, solid, dependable, and a stay at home mother with a daily help to assist with the worst of the domestic chores. What may also have been a factor during Vernon’s upbringing, although he never mentioned it to either his wife, or to Jo Rowling his biographer, was that his maternal grandmother was estranged from the Dursley clan; Doreen having married into trade, was never forgiven despite the arrival of grandchildren.

The Dursley house, detached with a garden and trees, was typically Edwardian and situated on the west side of the town. True, it made it a more difficult journey to work for Fred, as the colliery he was responsible for was on the east side of town, but their new found post-war wealth had permitted the move. The added inconvenience of the walk to and from the station at both ends of his journey, and the daily train ride, was made up for by the added status of the house. Being detached, it was a cut above those of his peers. The fact it also enabled him to attend a well-appointed church, and leave his chapel roots in Rainworth behind him, was part of the upward path he’d sought.

Vernon was never the most strong-willed child, and with Marjorie the complete opposite, he was rather bullied as a youngster. The two-year older Marjorie rather enjoyed pushing him around, his toys became her toys, her friends also enjoying keeping him in his place. His mother should have noticed, but as a staunch Conservative in a strongly socialist area she felt it was down to her, and her small circle of like-minded friends, to be the backbone of the Party. The fund raising and action to try to mobilise the vote rarely got them more than an occasional Councillor elected to the Borough and County Councils, but they felt it was their duty. Vernon and Marjorie were as often as not dragged along too.

Fred too was staunchly Conservative and had managed to be inducted into the local Lodge. Despite his lowly origins he detested socialism with a vengeance; nationalisation was, in his opinion, a disgrace, order came through capitalism and avoidance of waste. Luxuries were at a minimum, it didn’t matter if you could afford it, fripperies were unnecessary, order, habit, respectability and progress through your own endeavours was what should count. The one legacy of his past as a simple collier’s son from Rainworth was to use every endeavour possible to direct his son not to follow him down. He’d got to be Deputy, that had status, but there were not that many Deputies. 

In his own way Fred loved his wife and children, but the house was not one where the outlet of emotion was an everyday occurrence. In his world the man earned the money, came home to a meal on the table, with time for a cigar and the newspaper and, from time to time, an evening out on Lodge business. In her turn Doreen ran the home, sorted the bills, got her satisfactory slice of the income and managed the finances, it was a debateable point whether the dominant household force was patriarchal or matriarchal. For the children, however, the overwhelming thing was the rigidity and order, who ever wielded that force, cold austerity was the winner not warmth, love and affection. Marjorie’s outlet was her pet dogs. Vernon just tried to be like his father: unfortunately, as it was to prove in the long-term, that misogynistic view of how life in a male dominated, entirely uncontroversial, unchanging world. was too well learnt by the young Vernon.

At eleven, after an undistinguished primary school era, he was shipped off to the low-rank public school, Smeltings. A surprising choice by his father, given the oddness in disciplinarian methods there; perhaps it was because of the school’s emphasis on discipline. The result was another few years of his life where order, orthodoxy, and the need for a stiff upper lip became the order of the day. His sister had been luckier, her school was ordered around creating the woman of tomorrow, admittedly a rather lop-sided and Home Counties view of how a woman of tomorrow should acquit herself, but at least they had warm baths, not the cold-showers of Smeltings. Vernon was not sportingly inclined, despite a body shape ideal for a front-row forward, and at Smeltings he kept himself to himself, using the library, and in particular the section covering capitalist endeavour, economics and accountancy. 

He left Smeltings with a desire to get on but with only a poor set of A Levels. As a public school leaver his Smeltings expectations were that the school-tie would mean something, it might have done from one of the better schools, but his father had not picked well. This was something Vernon never accepted, later inflicting the same dismal, educationally poor, Smeltings experience onto his own son. 

Finding university closed to him was a set back. He left home and his progression through higher education was via a Business Studies HND course at Leeds, one of the newly opened Polytechnics. The changed environment encouraged him to study, the need to catch up making him put in the hours, his parental role-models leading him to shun the worst of student excesses. The sixties may have swung for others, for Vernon, maybe just a slight tremor.

After qualifying he moved to London finding a small bed-sit to rent just off the North Circular Road that was handy for the tube. He was taking up a position at Grunnings , a small company making industrial drills, in the newly evolving managerial profession of Sales and Marketing. The company were not world beaters, the Job Description and title read far better than the actuality, but it was a job, and one Vernon found he was good at, to the mutual benefit of the company and Vernon’s bonuses. 

As 1977 unfolded with all the patriotic fervour of the Royal Jubilee, the 25 year-old Vernon had an eye on the future. All was right with the world around him, he could feel it, true there was still a labour government in Westminster but the great British Monarchy was in the ascendancy again, times were about to change. Other men might follow the fashion trends, flares, wide ties, high rise shoes and even, god-forbid, make up but that life was not for him. The self-centred Vernon knew what he wanted, and just assumed he would get it, even if he had to bully and bludgeon his way up the promotional ladder. 

To ride the building wave of prosperity he had decided he needed a wife. With the arrogance of a salesman, unversed in the ways of wooing women, he just assumed he would see someone, talk to them, they would see his life sales pitch as the future and wish to marry him. His unorthodox home life, and development years in a single sex boarding school, had left him somewhat disabled in the art of social interaction with girls. It wasn’t that he liked boys, that had never been on the cards despite others around him at Smeltings taking that route, it was just that he never really met girls other than his bullying sister “Marge” and her cronies. 

The idea of love was not really on his RADAR, as no one had ever shown him much, he’d never had a soft centred role model to follow. He would look for an ordinary girl who could be shaped into a future executive wife. He certainly felt he was going to be an executive in due course, that wasn’t ambition, in Vernon’s eyes it was ordained fact, and he was going to make sure it happened. Unfortunately, as it was to turn out, although his executive ambitions were to come to pass, that ordinary life, with a mouldable and docile wife, wasn’t what Vernon got. 

It was at Grunnings that he met, and married after a short courtship, the equally emotionally scarred Petunia Evans. She offered him what he felt he needed, an ordinary, plain, undemonstrative girlfriend, nothing out of the ordinary and certainly not one of the new breed of feminist bra-burners. The first shock for Vernon came when the couple were still only newly engaged, Petunia told him about her sister, Lily, being a witch. 

Despite her skills being so out of his comfort zone he did try to build bridges with Lily. Some youthful naivety regarding the nature of what exactly it meant to be a fully trained Hogwarts graduate even led him to believe the wizarding world might be a new sales opportunity for the Grunnings range of drills. Sadly, given what was shortly to unfold, his relationship with Lily did not get off to a good start. Not long after they’d got engaged he and Petunia were out for a meal with Lily and her partner James Potter, the relationship was soured forever by James Potter’s teasing. A rather arrogant, full on wizard, the unworldly, boring and ordinary Vernon had been just too tempting a target for James’ slightly twisted brand of humour. It was around this time that Vernon's parents died; however, with the sale of their estate split with his sister he was able to buy a new build house in the Surrey commuter belt. It may have looked ordinary, even perhaps a bit small, but for a just-married, on the rise junior executive it was just the thing.

Although Lily and James did attend Vernon and Petunia’s wedding, despite Lily’s rebuttal as a bridesmaid, the relationship worsened as a consequence of further poor behaviour by James during the ceremony. The rift was now too wide to be patched, despite stated good intentions, and Vernon and Petunia did not go to the Potter/Evans wedding. In Autumn 1981, a year after the arrival of Dudley, his first-born son, Vernon’s life was to be further turned on its head when his in-laws were murdered and their son, the infant Harry Potter, was deposited on the Dursley doorstep at 4 Privet Drive. 

For both Vernon and Petunia this was a turning point. Feeling life had once again kicked them hard, they retreated further and further into a life-style of ordinariness, their thinking being that if they ignored the unusual just maybe it will begin to ignore them. 

Vernon’s early life had been a mix of discipline and emotional coldness, for his own son he was determined that should not be the case. What Dudley thought he wanted Dudley got, that life-style viewpoint did not extend to young Harry. In Harry’s case his view was that his parents had been good for nothing wastrels, what Harry needed was the discipline he himself had been subjected to; it was going to be best to knock the oddness out of him.

It is often debated as to whether it is nature or nurture during childhood that shapes the adult. For both Vernon and Petunia their childhood years had amplified latent behavioural traits that influenced them during adulthood, the one amplifying the other. Conversely for both the children they brought up, a genetic line of fearlessness and loyalty ran deep within the Evans family blood-line. In Harry it shaped his experiences at Hogwarts, for Dudley it took until the dementor attack in his teen years before it began to be evident and the softening changes began to emerge. 

As for Vernon; opportunities for him to change had arisen throughout his teen and adult life, he choose to unswervingly follow the examples set by his father. We therefore see that Vernon Dursley’s early life, was undoubtedly, the key influence on his later failure as a husband, parent and guardian.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Hopefully the canon aspects above, gleaned from the books, films, Pottermore articles and several fan-wikis, are correct. 
> 
> 2) COPYRIGHT - All references to the Harry Potter characters, scenarios and locations mentioned are fully recognised as the intellectual property of J K Rowling and her subsequent publishers and no commercial benefits are being accrued or claimed. However, the originally created characters and plot suggestions solely within this work remain mine.


End file.
